


Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

by demon_dream



Category: Boku no Hero Academia
Genre: Dancing, M/M, Metaphors, Pining, a dream is a wish your heart makes, gory metaphors, in which feelings are not repressed despite great effort, somebody save Izuku from his brain, zero dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 13:52:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15144500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demon_dream/pseuds/demon_dream
Summary: Izuku is the strongest person many of his classmates know. He's reliable. He's a rock.Buttoned behind those smiling lips is a whole lot of wordless screaming and hemorrhaging heartblood. Or that's what it feels like.He can keep a lid on this. He can. It's not important, he's already in possession of so much he doesn't deserve, even if he's drowning beneath the weight of things unspoken.He doesn't say a word, not even in the silence of his room.He doesn't have to.





	Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

   The marble floor twists his reflection like funhouse mirrors in a horror movie.

   It's fascinating, in a morbid way. The world fades out to grainy black static in his peripheral vision, honey-amber tiles rippling in the candlelight like a silent movie drenched in sepia. His eyes are caught on the imperfections, the way his reflection in the polish wavers and dissipates like a half-dreamed ghost. An interesting metaphor. An interesting image to mull over, roll over his tongue like toffee.

   It clacks against something before it ever reaches his teeth, interrupted, and he bites down on the intrusive thought too late to check himself.

   A few feet away, another reflection ripples on the ballroom floor, not far enough to be dismissed, not close enough to offer more than a taste. There are no identifying features swimming in the glare of candlelight, but he knows.

   Ice drips slowly down his spine, freezing his throat and gathering in his stomach, while heat spirals up from his gut to curl around his ears. He can't look up, and so he does, just enough to see the gleaming black of perfect dress shoes and the crease of well-ironed white suit pants.

   White, like long tapers in a candelabra.

   He doesn't have the presence of mind to flinch from the thought like usual. Something about the quiet candlelight gives him strange peace, whirring thoughts slowed to an easy trickle. His pulse is steady and slow, the expansion of ice in the cracks of a boulder and the trickle of snowmelt as the sun warms his skin. He can't look up, he can't look at all, but he has, and with that the needle drops. Silence, and then the smooth inexorable stride of a man stepping to him. There is no music. The breath-soft brush and tap of the movement rushes into Izuku's bones like the sea swallowing the shore.

   He's frozen in place, eyes prickling with heat, and it gets exponentially worse as pale legs become pale torso becomes an ivory piano hand extended quietly before him. He can't look up. He can't look away.

   The needle has met the groove, and inexorably turns. There is no music.

   Izuku reaches out to take his hand, and bends down to press his lips to cold fingers to avoid glancing up.

   He doesn't expect a burning touch to his chin, still and firm, and his face is helplessly tipped up to meet stormcloud and cyanide eyes. Beautiful in the distance, brilliant this close, he digs immaterial nails into his slowly crumbling walls. It feels like this man is ripping out the staples in his eviscerated chest with every second of prolonged eye contact, like the warmth flooding his chest is a spreading spill of fresh blood, false comfort to a slowly cooling corpse. There are fingers on his jaw, a hand wrapped around his. It feels nice.

   He wants to kiss the man he is, the boy he knew. He wants to kiss him, soft like ashes, let him breathe fire into his lungs and send shivers down his spine. He wants to be let go, left with thoughtless grace, and shatter on the floor like a dropped wine glass.

   Instead he watches the candlelight play on regal cheekbones, and lets the silence speak.

   The tension does not sing but rather croon, low and sure like the hand on his back. The ties that bind hum between them like strings beneath a rosined bow, and it would almost be laughable how utterly polite and measured the hand grasping his remains as he is molded into a cooperative form. As though ribcages aren't about to burst and spatter from the strain of containing these hearts, the strain of careful brakes on this unstoppable train wreck. Izuku wants to laugh. Izuku wants to cry.

   He rests his scarred hand on an ivory-clad shoulder, and they waltz to the flicker of the candlelight while Izuku's breath shakes like the dying trees in autumn.

   He can't look up, even still, though there's nowhere else to look. He can't pay attention to his own eyesight. Their feet make little noise on the sepia stretch of marble, and there are impressions of mirrors, gilt rococo, a thousand tall and silent candles, but he's too busy forgetting with enough force to memorize the press of a forearm against his side, the flutter at the tips of dual-toned hair, the hint of muscle movement forewarning an easy, practiced turn. It feels like they've done this a thousand times. It feels like a first time. It feels like an ending.

   He's swept out of his head by a change of grip, glancing back before he thinks and locking with those force-of-nature irises again. He doesn't know how the other man's body can contain that soul, with the way it surges in his eyes. He follows, unspoken, as his arm is lifted above his head and he spins.

   He gives his back, and he gives his breast. This time, he doesn't look away, and when those glittering eyes pull him in like a moth he answers in kind to move this mountain, move him back, match him step for step. There are no words for the way that marble face flickers, the change in his torso, the brief flicker of their clasped hands, and there are a thousand words in the way their slow dance begins to turn. Izuku does not hurry, he does not force, but there is a press and pull in his veins that seems to pull his partner under like a riptide. He _wants_ , and if for only this moment he can _have_. Izuku Midoriya of the eternally outstretched hands is prepared to _take_.

   He registers a sound, the shaky intake of breath, and the steady unraveling pauses.

   He can feel it, like thread between his fingers, like words behind his teeth, like the arch of an upraised hand before the explosion tears him apart.

   He breathes in, and guides his brittle partner into a controlled turn, stepping back as he steps forward. The needle falls back into the groove, and the swell of silent violins fades to a more gentle hum.

   He sets his thoughts aside again, the churning grey-black undertow, and lets himself relax into the press of the bone-white hand on his spine. It is enough. It has always been enough. It's already more than he's ever been given before, and he enjoys the small things. The way their bodies fit together, the way the candlelight runs in honey streaks over pale cheeks, the quiet flick of barely-there dual toned lashes. It's interesting. He's interesting.

   He loses himself to the little things, and forgets for a moment the way this bleeding warmth masks a spreading cold. He basks in it, bares his throat to it, and lets himself sway like a tapered candle in the empty expanse of a cavernous ballroom.

   Todoroki Shouto dips him gently while he falls, and the record circles to a slow halt.  


* * *

 

   Deku opens gritty eyes to stare blankly at his ceiling.

   For some reason, his ears are straining for music.

**Author's Note:**

> And thus the native hue of resolution  
> Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,  
> And enterprise of great pitch and moment  
> With this regard their currents turn awry  
> And lose the name of action.  
> —Shakespeare


End file.
